(Frank Galarza connects on Sebastien Bouchard; via)
It was a comprehensive decision victory, the one Joel Diaz, Jr. scored on Showtime’s prospect-oriented program ShoBox Friday night against Tylser Asselstine. If it left you cool to Diaz as a prospect or an action attraction, though, it would be hard to blame you.
Diaz, a junior lightweight, hit harder and landed more. He won all but two rounds on my scorecard, the 8th and 9th (Asselstine was rightfully docked a point for losing his mouthpiece in the 8th). The scores read 97-92 across the board. Asselstine wore two dark black eyes by fight’s end.
Diaz nonetheless failed to impress. Asselstine moved and bedeviled Diaz a little with a southpaw hex, in quantities sufficient to make Diaz appear like he was struggling. In his thriller against Guy Robb two years ago, Diaz at least exhibited a flare for the dramatic, a flare enabled by Robb himself. So what is Diaz? Is he a potential action star who needs a playmate to slug with him? Or is he a talent who gets hit more than he needs to? I lean toward “potential action star who needs a playmate to slug with,” but he is only 22 years old.
On the undercard, the out of nowhere backward-pedalling power shot pot shotter Frank Galarza won his own clear decision over Sebastien Bouchard. Galarza lost a point for low blows and lost some steam in the late rounds yet mostly reacted to Bouchard’s pressure with solid defense and a boatload of counters. Galarza, a junior middleweight, doesn’t usually fight in that style, so perhaps he was aiming to prove a point. He proved it satisfactorily. Yet like Diaz, he didn’t exactly make an impression as either an action fighter or true prospect.
